*****UPDATE*****
I should have included with this blog about Poland-Croatia love, this recent brief piece by Rodney Atkinson, head of FreeNations.com, summarizing the meaning and horror of Croatia’s entry into the EU:CROATIA - FASCIST ENOUGH FOR THE EUROPEAN UNION

While Germany and Austria have just blocked Serbia’s entry into the European Union Croatia was admitted in a ceremony at which David Cameron shook the hand of Croat leaders, whose country by any democratic or moral standards is a disgrace.

Serbia and the former Yugoslavia, in an exact reprise of the fascist 1940s, have been systematically attacked and dismembered by Germany and Austria since the 1980s. Germany, without the support of other countries, the EU or the UN, joined the Vatican in illegally recognising Croatia in 1991 which led to that State effectively declaring war on Yugoslavia (of which it was a constitutional part) and on Serbs in Croatia. Reuters reported the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal as saying “The first refugees in the Yugoslav conflict were the 40,000 Serbs who fled Croatia after a constitutional amendment defined them as an alien minority.” In this they had the full support of Germany and the Vatican - whose funds, liberally deployed among American PR firms helped to spread pro Croatia propaganda - so avidly absorbed by inter alia the BBC.

This was followed by the 1995 murder of [thousands] and ethnic cleansing of 300,000 Serbs from the so called “Krajina” by the Croats while NATO looked on. Today Serbia has been forced to hand over most of its historic Christian orthodox territory of Kosovo to Albanian Muslims and 1 million Serb refugees have sought refuge inside Serbia. When Alice Mahon the Labour MP visited former Serb villages in the Krajina in 1999 she said: “I can only conclude that the Croatian government is aiming for an ethnically pure state. The international community is tolerating these openly racist policies.” She should have added “religious policies”.

This suffering is not enough for Germany which has managed to achieve precisely what Nazis and Fascists achieved in the 1940s - the break up of Yugoslavia and the promotion of Croatia - then and now the most blatantly fascist state in Europe. German Nazis helped to arm and train Croat fascist gangs in the 1990s…

Two Croat Generals recently convicted at the Hague Tribunal of the most hideous crimes during the mass ethnic cleansing in the Krajina have been declared innocent by the Croatian Roman Catholic Church and the Croat Government has mobilised its political and diplomatic forces in their defence…

Nor must we forget the grotesque and frequent fascist demonstrations by the Croat people. At a Croatia Italy football match in Livorno, Italy the Croat fans formed a Swastika on the terraces. The UEFA representative at the match later warned:

“We have had many problems with this in Eastern Europe before and Croatia have been among the worst offenders. Because of the problems we have encountered with Croatian teams in the past, they have been warned future sanctions will be much heavier than any which have been imposed for previous incidents.”

Croatia’s most popular pop star Marko Perkovic calls himself Thompson (after the machine gun used to murder Serbs in the 1990s) and his fans give mass Nazi salutes. A 2007 Zagreb concert featuring “Thompson” was attended by the Croatian Education Minister, Dragan Primorac. Nor should we ignore the disgraceful attempt by the Croatian political establishment today to minimise or even deny the fact that hundreds of thousands of Jews, gypsies and Serbs were exterminated at the Jasenovac camp during the Second World War.
…
It is no myth that in 1997 Croatians greeted German troops with their right arms raised in a Nazi salute as they chanted “Heil Hitler,” as reported in The Washington Times at the time. Around the same time Newsweek reported that when German tanks passed through Croatia as part of the NATO deployment to the Balkans, “Croatians greeted the Germans with the straight-armed fascist salute,” an expression of solidarity dating back to the 1940s alliance between Croatian fascists and the Nazis.

Croatia is once again flying the same fascist checkerboard flag that it flew in 1941, when Hitler recognized Croatia as an independent nation for being his loyal ally. The map of the Balkans drawn by the Nazis in 1942 is almost identical to today’s map of the Balkans created by NATO. As A.M. Rosenthal wrote in “Back From the Grave” in the New York Times on April 15, 1997: … “In World War II, Nazi Germany had no executioner more willing, no ally more passionate, than the Fascists of Croatia. They are returning, 50 years later, from what should have been their eternal grave, the defeat of Nazi Germany. The Western allies who dug that grave with the bodies of their servicemen have the power to stop them, but do not.”

In modern Croatia many streets bear the names of 1940s fascists and there are vicious attacks on Serbs and non Catholics. In April 2006 two reporters for a Serbian newspaper were beaten up in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Their Serbian accent was picked up while they were speaking to each other. They said they were lucky to be alive. In 2000 The Washington Post reported the following graffiti in Croatia: “We Croats do not drink wine, we drink the blood of Serbs from Knin”.

Even Croats have been persecuted if they had a history of anti- fascism. In the Guardian of 14th July 2003 Julia Pascal reported:

“I meet J, a 76-year-old Croatian who, at 15, ran to the partisans. This war heroine fought Ustashe, Italians and Germans and still has a body full of shrapnel fragments. President Franjo Tudjman withdrew the partisans’ pensions for six months during the 1991 war and her husband, once Tito’s bodyguard, starved to death.”

In 2008 a well known Croat journalist Ivo Pukanic was murdered by a car bomb. He joined the ranks of other journalists who had been murdered or beaten up for investigating the murky links between Croat criminals, politicians and businessmen.

“German Europe”, which (having destroyed the democratic nationhood of 26 other countries in the European Union is now economically strangling to death the nations in the Euro-zone) sees all this as natural and normal. Indeed it usually is on the Continent when they dominate it - there are only two fundamental gears, communist or fascist. Either way authoritarian anti democratic Statism and corporatism is the order of the day. Free trading democratic nation states are anathema to the German (and French) political class. Britain is now constitutionally and politically trapped in this hideous “European Union” (based largely on the Nazis 1942 plans for a “European Economic Community” utilising the same strategies and similar structures) because the British collaborators and appeasers of the 1980s and 1990s were not countered by leading Parliamentarians - although they were, vociferously, by many of us outside Parliament.

So now Croatia, the most overt representative of that 1940s fascism which it has extended by its recent behaviour into the 21st century is welcomed ceremoniously as a member of the European Union while Serbia, whose people have suffered grievously and with a history of anti fascism and as an ally of Britain and the USA, is rejected. If the British political class still does not understand what they have done then they are guilty not just of gross incompetence but of a crime of historical dimensions for which a terrible price is being paid

*************END UPDATE************

I realize they’re both Catholic, and Poland is happy to have a fellow Catholic nation enter the EU, but sometimes that’s just not enough for a common foundation. At least it shouldn’t be. Of course, that’s only if you know — or care — what the Croatian strain of Catholicism is like. And most people won’t know until I can convince Eli Roth to film the next installment of the sadistic, gory thriller “Hostel” in Croatia, which is a bit more apt than his previous choice of Slovakia. Anyway, upon Croatia’s welcome to the EU this month, Poland was apparently beside itself:

Accession Treaty with Croatia signed by Donald Tusk/photo by Grzegorz Roginski /Chancellery of the Prime Minister

“Welcome to the EU” - said Prime Minister Donald Tusk to the representatives of Croatia at the ceremony marking the signing of the Croatia’s EU accession treaty.

The treaty was signed on behalf of Croatia by President Ivo Josipović and Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, on behalf of the EU by the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and representatives of other EU Member States.

“We have behind us an exhausting discussion at a crucial moment for the history of the Union. We are looking for a way out of the crisis, which has been so severely felt all over the world, particularly in the euro area, and yet the decision of Croatia and the hopes and dreams of other countries applying to join the EU shows that the EU has a profound significance” - Donald Tusk said.

The Head of the Polish government remarked that those who remember when they themselves entered the EU were well aware what a moving moment it was for the leaders of the country and its citizens. “Croats are entitled to be greatly satisfied, because their way into Europe was more difficult than many of today’s EU members” - he added.

“It’s a day of joy for Croatia and the European Union” - said European Council President Herman Van Rompuy in congratulating the leaders of Croatia for their courage in striving for membership. “The EU acts as a powerful magnet for peaceful change in our surroundings” - stressed the European Council President.

“The success of Croatia is a success for Europe and its peace policy, which is the strongest foundation for a united Europe” - said Croatian President Ivo Josipović at the ceremony.

Croatia applied for EU membership in 2003; formal negotiations began in October 2005 and ended on 30th June 2011. The country will enter the EU on 1st July 2013 after completion of the ratification process in all Member States and Croatia.

To mark Croatia’s signing of the EU Accession Treaty, the Polish Presidency launched an unusual project which involved filming a welcome speech in which everyone could participate. The single speech, compiled from a variety of different recordings, constitutes a symbolic gift from Poland to the representatives of Croatia. The name of the project, Dobrodošli, comes from the Croatian word for welcome.